if you are on vacay or just sick of talking about license stuff, I understand and sorry in advance for being a pest, but do I have warn you I plan to keep pinging here until I get a reply ;)
@all: Just to circle back to the original topic and close out this thread, I want to clarify that following surt's advice, I will refrain from pinging contributors about the difference between CC-BY and OGA-BY unless they explicitly mention being new to licensing or request help understanding the different licenses.
Per eugeneloza suggestion, I have opened a separate forum topic to discuss how to improve the licensing FAQ on OGA to help folks better understand the different licenses at the time of submission.
thanks all for your thoughts!
@claudeb: thanks for the pointer re: file formats, hadn't really considered any '10 years down the road' scenarios, so you've certainly given me food for thought on the subject. In the short term, all the art for my released game is available under OGA-BY on this site, in standard file formats ;)
Thursday, April 2, 2015 - 22:02
Not to mince word with Boogle but I would definitely lose the Ascii lines. To me it looks odd to have so much high res art surrounded by text borders. I would go with a bevelled windows or panes around everything with a light grey or brown fill.
Other than that, without knowing what all those icons are or do it's hard to comment on how well laid out it is, except to echo your own comment that it is very busy, lit up like a christmas tree really nails it.
i do think the bigger screen is a good direction but it does depend on what the gameplay is. If the game is mostly spent clicking things in the ui, then shrinking all the icons and what not might not be the right decision.
just my 2 cents...
Sunday, March 29, 2015 - 20:56
@mdwh:
> There used to be a problem that the CC summaries said nothing on this, but now they're pretty clear.
Clear in that they mention the 'technical measures' clause, not clear in that it's still easy to miss the fact that this covers some/most DRM systems.
I do agree that 'technical measures' is in a sense a better term, it's broader and encapsulates the idea better. But, as Lz_erk's post demonstrates, it's just a fact that people don't always make the leap from this term to DRM.
@Calinou: Sorry, yes you are correct. If you keep the derivative work private you do not have do anything with it. It's only if you release it publically as part of a game or otherwise, that you must make it available under the same license.
> "DRM free" is still proprietary software in most cases, thus the entire argument of how
> restricting DRM is to the freedom of the user is a bit moot.
This is an interesting point. In my case, I always encode all data files from my games using a custom (though pretty simple) bit scrambler and crc checker. This is to ensure the integrity of the files at run time. The idea is to make sure nothing's corrupted and prevent users from trivially cheating by twiddling config numbers or changing sprites or whatever. Even my case aside, it's really common for games to use propertiary file formats for their data (most because us gearhead programmers can always think of a 'better' way to store/load/format data ;)
I'm sure this could be construed as violating the 'technical measures' clause, if not in letter at least in spirit, since it makes it hard for users to access the work directly.
@Lz_erk: Well, that depends on what you mean by 'own' ;)
But generally speaking, no. OGA-BY 3.0 is identical to CC-BY 3.0 with the sole exception that the 'technical measures' clause has been removed.
If you release something as OGA-BY and someone uses them for a game they will not 'own' the pixels and they still must give credit to you as their creator. However, they will 'own' the pixels in the sense that they can redistribute them freely (and charge money for doing so) as part of their project. Still, again, they must give you credit and they cannot prevent you from redistributing the pixels as you see fit.
OGA-BY does lack a 'share alike' clause (CC-SA), meaning someone who creates derivative/new work from yours does not have to redistibute it publically, though they must still credit you as a contributing artist.
There is also a legitimate debate about whether distributing works in DRM'd systems 'removes' works from the public sphere or commons. Ex. suppose the OGA site disappears tomorrow and your hard drive crashes and you lose all backups of your work at the same time. Now suppose a dev is using your OGA-BY art in a game on a DRM'd platform. The dev is under no obligation to distribute the work sans DRM, so now your work is only available as a 'private' good. Kind of an extreme example, but hopefully it illustrates the idea (and it's actually not that far-fetched if you take a longer term view, like what about 10 years from now? 20 years from now? 50 years from now? etc). This is the sort of scenario that the 'technical measures' clause is meant to prevent. The idea is to ensure that the work will always stay 'free' or 'open'.
That's at least how I understand the point of the 'technical measures' clause. Since OGA-BY doesn't include this clause, choosing between CC-BY and OGA-BY is kind of a trade-off between ensuring the that work is forever free and making sure that it is maximally useful in today's world. Well, maybe others would put it differently, that's just my one line summary for you. ;)
Getting back to the original topic, you highlight /exactly/ the problem I see with how the licenses are presented on OGA. It's just not immediately obvious that 'technical measures' means 'no DRM', so it's too easy/common for artists to select CC-BY without realizing it restricts their work from being used on most commercial platforms today.
@bart: I know you are a busy guy, but no thoughts on how/if to address this issue?
@Dwapook: Calinou raises a good point. Overall, I would just say that I personally would not want to be caught in court trying to argue that a game on Steam is 100% DRM free, or more pointedly, that it in no way violates the CC-BY's 'technical measures' clause. For me, it's just a case of 'better safe than sorry'.
Interesting, pretty sure that is how my game functions on Steam. Steam just downloads the exe but you can run the game just fine w/o steam, and I'm pretty sure you could just copy the files around to run them elsewhere if you wished.
Somebody's summary of the different flavors of DRM on steam here:
@surt: I understand your point, and I suppose no matter how tactfully it's put, it'll always come off to some degree as 'asking for more', although that is sincerely not the intent. I do feel strongly that it is the artists decision how they want to distribute their work, and that folks shouldn't be pressured into one license or another. Like I say in the message text, folks are aces in my book no matter how they share their stuff.
However, I do think it's fair to say there is a lot of confusion around the anti-DRM clause of the CC-BY license. There are quite a few long forum discussions on the topic, and in particular http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/anti-drm-waiver springs to mind as a placewhere many long time/frequent OGA contributors have acknowledged that they didn't intend for their work to be restricted from use on DRM'd platforms when they chose the CC-BY license.
I say this not to be defensive, but just to explain that I am not trying to be a greedy bastard. I honestly think it's a pretty common thing for submitters to look at the licenses, click on CC-BY and think: 'you can use my work but you must credit me', yes that's what I want, without realizing that the 'technical measures' bit refers to using the work on DRM'd platforms (which make up the bulk of commercial platforms in today's world :(
I think where that leaves you is a place where artists submit work hoping to see it used in some fun projects, commercial or otherwise. But only less license savy or conscientious developers will use it, whereas the more learned/respectful developers will stear clear of it. Since (IMHO) respectful developers make it their business to be learned about proper licensing, this roughly translates to folks who are going to steal your work anyway do so and folks who want to use it legitamitely steer clear of because of the unintended anti-DRM stuff. I don't mean this a attack on CC-BY, I totally get the point of the 'technical measures' clause. I'm just saying this is what can happen if folks choose CC-BY w/o understanding the anti-DRM bit.
That said, you raise a good point, that's all alot of supposition on my part, and it's wrong to just assume people have made a choice in ignorance. And I suppose no matter how nicely it's stated, it's hard for a message like this not to come off as in some way muscling folks toward a particular license.
Like I say, that's why I'm struggling with this approach and why I posted this thread. I do think it's a genuine problem but I don't want to try and solve it in a way that bothers folks or damages the OGA community in anyway. Lord knows 'license wars' have killed many a good online community before and I'd hate for something like that befall OGA.
Finally let me say, you are definitely one of the last artists I'd want to scare off of OGA!
@eugeneloza: I think you are right, and this is probably a better approach, try to educate contributors on the way in, so they can select the license they intend upfront.
There is a breakdown of the license in the general site faq:
a) it is pitched a bit more toward developers/users than artists/submitters
b) it isn't linked anywhere from the art submission form (which has just links to the more detailed descriptions of each license)
c) it doesn't mention the OGA-BY license
d) it also doesn't mention the anti-DRM bits of CC-BY/SA licenses
In fact, the 'CC-BY' bit says 'Provided the author is properly credited, it is generally safe to use this content in a commercial work.' Which, if I didn't know better, I would assume meant CC-BY stuff was fine to use on DRM'd platforms. Actually, as a conscientous developer, this is what I assumed when I first discovered OGA based on that faq as well as the general license overview provided by the creative commons site. It wasn't until I saw a forum post on the topic that I understood that the 'technical measures' bit was referring to DRM. So maybe that's another reason I'm sensitive to this subject, I've made the same mistake just from the other side.
@Bart, any interest in updating the site FAQ to include some mention of the DRM stuff? What about a more submitter friendly version? (Something like 'Choosing the license that's right for you...') Or a link from the submission form to a general license faq?
@all: moving this thread to the 'feedback' forum, since that is the proper place for it, sorry for not realizing that in the first place.
@bart: no comment on this idea?
ps
if you are on vacay or just sick of talking about license stuff, I understand and sorry in advance for being a pest, but do I have warn you I plan to keep pinging here until I get a reply ;)
@all: Just to circle back to the original topic and close out this thread, I want to clarify that following surt's advice, I will refrain from pinging contributors about the difference between CC-BY and OGA-BY unless they explicitly mention being new to licensing or request help understanding the different licenses.
Per eugeneloza suggestion, I have opened a separate forum topic to discuss how to improve the licensing FAQ on OGA to help folks better understand the different licenses at the time of submission.
thanks all for your thoughts!
@claudeb: thanks for the pointer re: file formats, hadn't really considered any '10 years down the road' scenarios, so you've certainly given me food for thought on the subject. In the short term, all the art for my released game is available under OGA-BY on this site, in standard file formats ;)
Not to mince word with Boogle but I would definitely lose the Ascii lines. To me it looks odd to have so much high res art surrounded by text borders. I would go with a bevelled windows or panes around everything with a light grey or brown fill.
Other than that, without knowing what all those icons are or do it's hard to comment on how well laid out it is, except to echo your own comment that it is very busy, lit up like a christmas tree really nails it.
i do think the bigger screen is a good direction but it does depend on what the gameplay is. If the game is mostly spent clicking things in the ui, then shrinking all the icons and what not might not be the right decision.
just my 2 cents...
@mdwh:
> There used to be a problem that the CC summaries said nothing on this, but now they're pretty clear.
Clear in that they mention the 'technical measures' clause, not clear in that it's still easy to miss the fact that this covers some/most DRM systems.
I do agree that 'technical measures' is in a sense a better term, it's broader and encapsulates the idea better. But, as Lz_erk's post demonstrates, it's just a fact that people don't always make the leap from this term to DRM.
I think an astrix or otherwise with a call out the the DRM restriction and link to the 'Application of effective technical measures...' (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/License_Versions#Application_of_effecti...) would be a great addition to the OGA FAQ.
@bart: no interest in such a change?
@Calinou: Sorry, yes you are correct. If you keep the derivative work private you do not have do anything with it. It's only if you release it publically as part of a game or otherwise, that you must make it available under the same license.
@Julius:
> "DRM free" is still proprietary software in most cases, thus the entire argument of how
> restricting DRM is to the freedom of the user is a bit moot.
This is an interesting point. In my case, I always encode all data files from my games using a custom (though pretty simple) bit scrambler and crc checker. This is to ensure the integrity of the files at run time. The idea is to make sure nothing's corrupted and prevent users from trivially cheating by twiddling config numbers or changing sprites or whatever. Even my case aside, it's really common for games to use propertiary file formats for their data (most because us gearhead programmers can always think of a 'better' way to store/load/format data ;)
I'm sure this could be construed as violating the 'technical measures' clause, if not in letter at least in spirit, since it makes it hard for users to access the work directly.
@Lz_erk: Well, that depends on what you mean by 'own' ;)
But generally speaking, no. OGA-BY 3.0 is identical to CC-BY 3.0 with the sole exception that the 'technical measures' clause has been removed.
If you release something as OGA-BY and someone uses them for a game they will not 'own' the pixels and they still must give credit to you as their creator. However, they will 'own' the pixels in the sense that they can redistribute them freely (and charge money for doing so) as part of their project. Still, again, they must give you credit and they cannot prevent you from redistributing the pixels as you see fit.
OGA-BY does lack a 'share alike' clause (CC-SA), meaning someone who creates derivative/new work from yours does not have to redistibute it publically, though they must still credit you as a contributing artist.
There is also a legitimate debate about whether distributing works in DRM'd systems 'removes' works from the public sphere or commons. Ex. suppose the OGA site disappears tomorrow and your hard drive crashes and you lose all backups of your work at the same time. Now suppose a dev is using your OGA-BY art in a game on a DRM'd platform. The dev is under no obligation to distribute the work sans DRM, so now your work is only available as a 'private' good. Kind of an extreme example, but hopefully it illustrates the idea (and it's actually not that far-fetched if you take a longer term view, like what about 10 years from now? 20 years from now? 50 years from now? etc). This is the sort of scenario that the 'technical measures' clause is meant to prevent. The idea is to ensure that the work will always stay 'free' or 'open'.
That's at least how I understand the point of the 'technical measures' clause. Since OGA-BY doesn't include this clause, choosing between CC-BY and OGA-BY is kind of a trade-off between ensuring the that work is forever free and making sure that it is maximally useful in today's world. Well, maybe others would put it differently, that's just my one line summary for you. ;)
Getting back to the original topic, you highlight /exactly/ the problem I see with how the licenses are presented on OGA. It's just not immediately obvious that 'technical measures' means 'no DRM', so it's too easy/common for artists to select CC-BY without realizing it restricts their work from being used on most commercial platforms today.
@bart: I know you are a busy guy, but no thoughts on how/if to address this issue?
@Dwapook: Calinou raises a good point. Overall, I would just say that I personally would not want to be caught in court trying to argue that a game on Steam is 100% DRM free, or more pointedly, that it in no way violates the CC-BY's 'technical measures' clause. For me, it's just a case of 'better safe than sorry'.
Interesting, pretty sure that is how my game functions on Steam. Steam just downloads the exe but you can run the game just fine w/o steam, and I'm pretty sure you could just copy the files around to run them elsewhere if you wished.
Somebody's summary of the different flavors of DRM on steam here:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?10737-Can-someone-...
Wonder how it changes if you integrate Steamworks (acheivements, steam cards, etc) libraries into the game?
@surt: I understand your point, and I suppose no matter how tactfully it's put, it'll always come off to some degree as 'asking for more', although that is sincerely not the intent. I do feel strongly that it is the artists decision how they want to distribute their work, and that folks shouldn't be pressured into one license or another. Like I say in the message text, folks are aces in my book no matter how they share their stuff.
However, I do think it's fair to say there is a lot of confusion around the anti-DRM clause of the CC-BY license. There are quite a few long forum discussions on the topic, and in particular http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/anti-drm-waiver springs to mind as a placewhere many long time/frequent OGA contributors have acknowledged that they didn't intend for their work to be restricted from use on DRM'd platforms when they chose the CC-BY license.
I say this not to be defensive, but just to explain that I am not trying to be a greedy bastard. I honestly think it's a pretty common thing for submitters to look at the licenses, click on CC-BY and think: 'you can use my work but you must credit me', yes that's what I want, without realizing that the 'technical measures' bit refers to using the work on DRM'd platforms (which make up the bulk of commercial platforms in today's world :(
I think where that leaves you is a place where artists submit work hoping to see it used in some fun projects, commercial or otherwise. But only less license savy or conscientious developers will use it, whereas the more learned/respectful developers will stear clear of it. Since (IMHO) respectful developers make it their business to be learned about proper licensing, this roughly translates to folks who are going to steal your work anyway do so and folks who want to use it legitamitely steer clear of because of the unintended anti-DRM stuff. I don't mean this a attack on CC-BY, I totally get the point of the 'technical measures' clause. I'm just saying this is what can happen if folks choose CC-BY w/o understanding the anti-DRM bit.
That said, you raise a good point, that's all alot of supposition on my part, and it's wrong to just assume people have made a choice in ignorance. And I suppose no matter how nicely it's stated, it's hard for a message like this not to come off as in some way muscling folks toward a particular license.
Like I say, that's why I'm struggling with this approach and why I posted this thread. I do think it's a genuine problem but I don't want to try and solve it in a way that bothers folks or damages the OGA community in anyway. Lord knows 'license wars' have killed many a good online community before and I'd hate for something like that befall OGA.
Finally let me say, you are definitely one of the last artists I'd want to scare off of OGA!
@eugeneloza: I think you are right, and this is probably a better approach, try to educate contributors on the way in, so they can select the license they intend upfront.
There is a breakdown of the license in the general site faq:
http://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary
But:
a) it is pitched a bit more toward developers/users than artists/submitters
b) it isn't linked anywhere from the art submission form (which has just links to the more detailed descriptions of each license)
c) it doesn't mention the OGA-BY license
d) it also doesn't mention the anti-DRM bits of CC-BY/SA licenses
In fact, the 'CC-BY' bit says 'Provided the author is properly credited, it is generally safe to use this content in a commercial work.' Which, if I didn't know better, I would assume meant CC-BY stuff was fine to use on DRM'd platforms. Actually, as a conscientous developer, this is what I assumed when I first discovered OGA based on that faq as well as the general license overview provided by the creative commons site. It wasn't until I saw a forum post on the topic that I understood that the 'technical measures' bit was referring to DRM. So maybe that's another reason I'm sensitive to this subject, I've made the same mistake just from the other side.
@Bart, any interest in updating the site FAQ to include some mention of the DRM stuff? What about a more submitter friendly version? (Something like 'Choosing the license that's right for you...') Or a link from the submission form to a general license faq?
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